History NeverLiveItDown / SwordArtOnline

* Kirito's overpoweredness and hacking skills. Kirito had shown his hacking skills only twice, once when hacking into Japanese Registry to find out about his parents at 10, and another time when Kirito got into the Cardinal Admin System to save Yui (due to Yui opening the admin console a bit earlier in the episode). Detractors claim Kirito is the Japanese codifier of HollywoodHacking and he can make himself overpowered in ''any'' game just being at the right computer. Speaking about being overpowered, Kirito gets a lot of flack for being an InvincibleHero and [[NewPowersAsThePlotDemands gaining power-ups]], disregarding the fact [[CosmicPlaything he has to endure a lot of pain and failure in his life and things rarely go his way]], even counting how he was at his SAO stats immediately after logging into Alfheim Online, and how he used the Photon Sword to become one of the most overpowered characters in GGO. and Then there's the fact that countless characters from other series do the ''exact'' same thing and it gets treated as cool and badass, but when Kirito does so he gets labelled as Jesus-kun. To make it all the more confusing, in versus topics Kirito always gets bashed for being [[MemeticLoser a weak loser who would die]], making it seem like Kirito's badassery is only circumstantial.
** Related to this previous point, the infamous scene of Episode 4 of the anime, where Kirito resists the assault of seven players without moving a finger due to him being at a such higher level that they mathematically just can't kill him. This scene is ''always'' brought up in some fashion whenever Kirito's overpowerness is discussed (''especially'' when he's used as an example of a bad-taste-PowerFantasy), or just his poor character writing in general. That despite the fact that's literally ''the only scene in the entire franchise'' where Kirito is shown to be ''that'' overpowered[[note]]Except the end of ''Alicization'' and ''Ordinal Scale'', albeit people usually don't bring the latter example since the movie shows on screen why Kirito gets that powerful, and it's just a one-time boost that happens once the main tension of the film has already been resolved. As for the former, it's alleviated by the fact that [=PoH=] and Gabriel still manage to go toe to toe with him[[/note]]. He's been at the brink of being killed multiple times ever since, but detractors act as if he wins all of his fights by just standing up.
** Part of the problem lies in the fact that because the anime skips over large amounts of story and CharacterDevelopment, even in the leveling sense, and also leaves out most of Kirito's exposition so that the viewer only has context and a few sentences to go off of, so in the end a lot of Kirito's capabilities and gear come off as NewPowersAsThePlotDemands. The inability of several players to kill him above? It comes from a passive health regen meditative pose he cannot attack from or even ''move'' from[[note]]which also explains why his overpowered health regen doesn't kick in against later bosses and fights[[/note]]. While not all of his controversial acts are covered or justified in the light novels, [[AdaptationInducedPlotHole some of the most egregious cases get hit the worst in the anime.]]

* A lot of people claim that one of the main reasons why the [[FlameWar Flame Wars]] surrounding the series haven't died out yet is because of the anime being ubiquitous... but that claim doesn't hold much water. If you actually see how much anime content the series has gotten, it becomes pretty clear that the SAO anime has actually been fairly scarce for such a commercially successful show. Seasons 1 and 2 were over a year and a half apart, and over two years passed between Season 2 and the ''Ordinal Scale'' movie, with yet another year and a half after that for Season 3, which incidentally had a mid-season break that lasted a whopping 6 months. However, even during those long stretches of down time, people just never stopped talking about it.[[note]]Not even the Light Novels being still on going during those times is a valid explanation, since the discussed points in those [[FlameWar Flame Wars]] almost never come from the non-adapted volumes. Ditto the tie-in video games, which have an even smaller fanbase than the light novels.[[/note]]

* Sugou. Haters constantly bring him up as being a terrible villain who was one-note, generic, and cartoonishly over-the-top evil. Fans actually agree on this one, but thing is he was only around for one arc (10 episodes) and is never seen again. But haters make it sound like like he's an OverarchingVillain who's featured for the whole series.

* Kirito's overpoweredness and hacking skills. Kirito had shown his hacking skills only twice, once when hacking into Japanese Registry to find out about his parents at 10, and another time when Kirito got into the Cardinal Admin System to save Yui. Detractors claim Kirito is the Japanese codifier of HollywoodHacking and he can make himself overpowered in ''any'' game just being at the right computer. Speaking about being overpowered, Kirito gets a lot of flack for being an InvincibleHero and [[NewPowersAsThePlotDemands gaining power-ups]], disregarding the fact [[CosmicPlaything he has to endure a lot of pain and failure in his life and things rarely go his way]], even counting how he was at his SAO stats immediately after logging into Alfheim Online, and how he used the Photon Sword to become one of the most overpowered characters in GGO. and Then there's the fact that countless characters from other series do the ''exact'' same thing and it gets treated as cool and badass, but when Kirito does so he gets labelled as Jesus-kun. To make it all the more confusing, in versus topics Kirito always gets bashed for being [[MemeticLoser a weak loser who would die]], making it seem like Kirito's badassery is only circumstantial.

** Related to this previous point, the infamous scene of Episode 4 of the anime, where Kirito resists the assault of seven players without moving a finger due to him being at a such higher level that they mathematically just can't kill him. This scene is ''always'' brought up in some fashion whenever Kirito's overpowerness is discussed (''especially'' when he's used as an example of a bad-taste-PowerFantasy), or just his poor character writing in general. That despite the fact that's literally ''the only scene in the entire franchise'' where Kirito is shown to be ''that'' overpowered[[note]]Except the end of ''Alicization'' and ''Ordinal Scale'', albeit people usually don't bring the latter example since the movie shows on screen why Kirito gets that powerful, and it's just a one-time boost that happens once the main tension of the film has already been resolved[[/note]]. He's been at the brink of being killed multiple times ever since, but detractors act as if he wins all of his fights by just standing up.

* A lot of people claim that one of the main reasons why the [[FlameWar Flame Wars]] surrounding the series haven't died out yet is because of the anime being ubiquitous... but that claim doesn't hold much water. If you actually see how much anime content the series has gotten, it becomes pretty clear that the SAO anime has actually been fairly scarce for such a commercially successful show. Seasons 1 and 2 were over a year and a half apart, and over two years passed between Season 2 and the ''Ordinal Scale'' movie, with yet another year and a half after that for Season 3, which incidentally had a mid-season break that lasted a whopping 6 months. However, even during those long stretches of down time, people just never stopped talking about it.[[note]]Not even the Light Novels being still on going during those times is a valid explanation, since the discussed points in those [[FlameWar Flame Wars]] almost never come from the non-adapted volumes. Ditto the tie-in video games, which have an even smaller fanbase than the light novels.[[/note]]